We will be continuing several of the innovations developed during the pandemic: 1) periodic 'Happy Hours' giving all City high school chemistry teachers a chance to share their recent experiences in the 'classroom,' reflect on student learning and gain new content and pedagogical content knowledge through informal, supportive exchanges; 2) hybrid professional development during Summer Academies that blend synchronous on-line community building with asynchronous outdoor and 'lab' work plus guided reflection on interpreting and responding to student thinking; and 3)  providing on-line resources to support instruction.

The quick pivot also provided the opportunity to grow the relationships among the teachers from across the Baltimore.  The innovations are being duplicated in the other courses K-12.

Hi, Jaime. Our team includes a seasoned teacher who happened to have a great deal of expertise with various tools (Jamboard, etc.) perfectly suited to virtual instruction, along with a recent graduate of an M.Ed. program who also had familiarity with these tools. Over time our teachers became comfortable enough to share their own resources, too. The kits were assembled by Bess and teachers in our Summer Academy picked them up beforehand and then dropped them off afterwards. These weren't the complete kits they have available for in-school instruction, but just a subset to allow some hands-on work during the Academy. City Schools did not support hands-on learning by students due to equity and safety concerns, so no kits were distributed to students. Definitely a challenge for someone like me who has spent much of my professional career supporting authentic engagement with real world phenomena and materials.

Hi April, we've found the happy hours to be a great way to stay connected with the teachers and for them to stay connected with each other. At only 45 mins, there is a 'low-cost' commitment to joining in as well, particularly after a full day of virtual teaching. For our summer work, we made kits available for teachers to safely pick up at a central location and they were relatively low cost and included items like an infrared thermometer, rock samples, some vinegar to model acid rain, etc. These kits were only for the teachers during our summer institute. We were not able to provide kits directly to students for a variety of reasons. 

Thanks for these great questions Channa. Before the virtual shift, our development team teachers were already serving as a resource for their peers and became leaders within their schools. The curriculum writer for the project is a district-level staff member and classroom teacher. She and other teachers for the team have lead district-wide PD for chemistry teachers and resources created by development team teachers to support their own virtual instruction have been shared across the district to help ease the instructional transitions. We are hopeful that these new norms continue when we return to in-person instruction. 

We are collecting a variety of data related to student learning and teacher change during the curriculum development, implementation, and revision process. We have some very promising data related to students' growth in modeling local phenomena. We have also been able to document positive shifts in teachers' perceptions of the curriculum and their nuanced understanding of the integrated aspects of chemistry and Earth science.  

Hi Liz - we are definitely pleased with the success of the pivot, given all the challenges for everyone this school year, it would have been very easy to lose focus on this important work. Many of our teachers have been a part of our development team group for multiple years, so they were definitely connected to one another and had formed a community already. The virtual shift provided an opportunity to maintain those connections. We also had new teachers join to learn more about the curriculum and specific activities, to brush up on content from expert scientists, and learn about new virtual teaching tools. So I do think having these specific opportunities available for teachers encouraged and helped maintain participation.

Hello Rose.  We did have relationships with some of the teachers prior to the virtual pivot.  We were already hosting in person monthly sessions with a group of teachers so moving those meetings to a virtual setting was easy.  However, our summer program brought in new teachers we had not worked with before.  We worked very closely with our partners at Baltimore City Pubic Schools to promote our summer program to all high school chemistry teachers in the district.  The school system has a summer learning system in place where teachers can register for different professional learning opportunities and we were able to advertise through this system which really helped us get the word out. We also had our course approved for professional learning credits which go towards pay increases for the teachers.  This was another way we made our program attractive. Once teachers were in attendance, we employed different strategies to get to know the teachers and have them get to know us.  We always start off each session with an open discussion for teachers to share anything they like about their teaching.  This informal start to each session helped participants feel welcome and gave everyone a chance to participate in conversation.  We also used a lot of small group breakout sessions and small group work which allowed the teachers to interact in a smaller and more meaningful way with their peers. Participation was/is entirely voluntary.  

Thanks Mary.  I've been very inspired by what your team at the Center for STEM Excellence has achieved during Covid.  The resources you've generated are fantastic and I've shared some of them widely with teachers in my programs. The virtual world has many benefits and we will certainly look very closely at what we have achieved this past year as we determine what aspects of virtual programming to keep.